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Such A Fascinating Game

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Khoa Nguyen Anh
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31 views

Such A Fascinating Game

Uploaded by

Khoa Nguyen Anh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Such a Fascinating Game

It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of


people at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in
tournaments. It is chess, a humble arrangement where two players
stare at a checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-
eight grid, eyeing their 16 pieces each as the first move is played.
When the opponent's king is checkmated, the game is over, but
between the beginning and the end, a wealth of elegant,
complicated, and fascinating moves and combinations can unfold.

The origins of chess lie in Northwest India, around the 6th century.
At that time there existed a game known as caturanga, which
means 'four division', those divisions being of the military,
represented by the infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariotry. These
pieces were aventually to become the pawn, knight, bishop, and
rook, respectively, in the modern descendant of the game. Around
600 AD, caturanga spread to Persia, then, after the Muslim conquest
of that region (beginning around that time), the game gained ground
throughout the Islamic world, from where it eventually spread to
Europe.

Around 1200 AD, Southern Europe began modifying the rules, and
within 300 years the game had become recognisably the one we
play today. The queen had long replaced the earlier vizier to become
the most powerful piece, while the pawns were given the option of
advancing two squares on the first move in order to accelerate play.
These new rules quickly spread across Western Europe, creating
the game now known as 'western chess' or 'international chess', to
distinguish it from older or regional variants of the game.

As for the players themselves, one world think that the best of them
are necessarily smart, with extremely high IQs; however, research
has not been able to confirm this link. Some studies have shown
that good chess players may have strong IQs, but there appears to
be no direct correlation between this and chess ability.
Paradoxically, the academically brilliant may even be less able at
chess, and vice versa. Evidently, there are other factors involved,
such as spacio-visual insight and subliminal memory, not
necessarily picked up by conventional intelligence tests, readily
noticeable, or even useful in real life.
But there are non-mental factors which clearly play a role. No one
can doubt that raw talent is necessary, but even the best and
brightest must systematically undergo at least 10 to 15 years of
theoretical study and competitive practice before reaching world
championship levels. The American chess genius, Bobby Fischer,
was only 13 when he produced the 'Game of the Century', but he
was not world champion until he was 29. The Russian chess player,
Garry Kasparov, was the youngest world champion ever, at 22, but
he began dedicated state-sponsored training from the age of ten
onwards, complete with personal chess coaches.

All this shows the fixed place chess has in western culture,
meaning also that this region has, historically, produced all the
greatest players. However, interest in chess is now growing in the
East, although there is one problem being the stiff competition it
faces with local board games, such as Xiangqi and Go. These are
more popular by a wide margin, but regarding China for example,
with its huge population and state-sponsored training, it is fast
becoming a major chess power. The reigning women's world chess
champion is Chinese, and the country performs well in chess
Olympiads. The future for the game in this country looks bright
indeed.

Talking about the future inevitably leads to the subject of computer


chess. Serious chess-playing machines began to emerge in the
1970s and 1980s, but their abilities were far below that of the top
human players. Progress, although slow, was steady, and with
increasing memory and faster processing, it was inevitable that one
day a computer would be able to match humans. Yet this is merely
by brutally going through all the possible moves, millions per
second, deeper and deeper into the position. The final move-choices
give the appearance of intuition and long-term strategy, when in
actual fact they are simply based on an unthinking and directionless
material count.

In 1989, the computer 'Deep Thought' scored some wins against top
human players, although the world champion at that time, Garry
Kasparov, easily defeated the machine in some arranged games. In
1996, however, IBM brought out the next generation computer,
'Deep Blue' , Pitting it in s match with this same player. Although it
managed to score the first win against a reigning world champion,
by losing three and drawing two of the remaining games, it lost the
match. However, a return match the following year saw Kasparov
facing an even better machine, 'Deeper Blue'. This time, the
computer triumphed 3 1/2 - 2 1/2. And they are only getting better.

As impressive as these results seem, most people agree that it is


similar to a forklift beating a weightlifter - somehow not a valid
contest, and of little significance. Yes, computers can win games,
but creativity and intelligence are still the province of human
players. It is these factors, as well as the tense psychological
struggle of minds and the personalities involved, together with the
limitless artistry of the positions themselves, which will always
make chess such a fascinating game

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